{"title":"Engaged Ephemeral Art: Street Art and the Egyptian Arab Spring","authors":"S. Naguib","doi":"10.17885/HEIUP.TS.2016.2.23590","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17885/HEIUP.TS.2016.2.23590","url":null,"abstract":"The wave of uprisings known as the Arab Spring that swept over the Middle East and North Africa from December 2010 to early 2013 left its imprint on political and social life in the countries concerned. This ephemeral moment also marked a change in various forms of artistic expression. Street art, graffiti, and calligraffiti are among the most striking art forms of this short period. Artists recorded and commented on events and developments in the political situation. They drew upon their people’s cultural memory to impart their messages and expressed dissension, civil disobedience, and resistance by combining images and scripts. This article is about the materiality of visual art and the translation of political contestation into street art, graffiti, and calligraffiti in Egypt. It probes the ways slogans were visualised, drawn, and inscribed on the walls of the urban space in Cairo and then disseminated on the internet and social media. Translation relates here to transcultural contacts and the interplay between texts, images, and contexts from the vantage point of intermediality.","PeriodicalId":42064,"journal":{"name":"Transcultural Studies","volume":"2 1","pages":"53-88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47155974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Islamic Studies : A Field of Research Under Transcultural Crossfire","authors":"Daniel G. König","doi":"10.17885/heiup.ts.2016.2.23600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.ts.2016.2.23600","url":null,"abstract":"This article gauges the transcultural character and disposition of Islamic Studies, a discipline of European origins that emerged in the early modern period and has been accused of catering to the needs of a colonial and imperialist agenda. It establishes that a discipline with a history of formulating largely non-Muslim Western perceptions on non-Western societies marked by Islam, whose object of study is a religious orbit that transcends ethnic and political boundaries, can be regarded as transcultural per se . This does not mean, however, that the transcultural approach—presented here as a methodological tool for conceptual deconstruction and a multiplication of scales and perspectives of analysis—will be accepted by intellectuals and ideologues in Western and Muslim societies alike. Discussing various potential anti-reactions to the transcultural approach, the article concludes that such criticism cannot erase the many forms of interpenetration that have marked and will continue to mark future relations between Islam and the West. In view of this, the transcultural approach seems to be of high relevance to understand past, present, and future processes of interaction, entanglement, and hybridization.","PeriodicalId":42064,"journal":{"name":"Transcultural Studies","volume":"2016 1","pages":"101-135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46896703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sinology: Chinese Intellectual History and Transcultural Studies","authors":"P. Blitstein","doi":"10.17885/heiup.ts.2016.2.23601","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.ts.2016.2.23601","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I attempt to identify some methodological connections between Chinese intellectual history and transcultural studies in Euro-American academia. I will focus on one shared methodological point: the critique of so-called “methodological nationalism,” that is, of the assumption (explicit or not) that the nation is the ultimate framework for research. Although this critique is a constitutive principle of transcultural studies, and it only represents a particular, and not necessarily mainstream, approach in Chinese intellectual history, the two fields have developed a shared agenda in this regard. In order to explain the tensions and convergences, I will first offer a quick historical overview of the two fields. First, I will focus on the contrast between old and new uses of the concept of “transcultural”; then I will contextualize Chinese intellectual history within the longer history of classical sinology and area studies. After this overview, I will explain their respective relations towards methodological nationalism and give evidence, in their recent history, of some intersecting points between the two.","PeriodicalId":42064,"journal":{"name":"Transcultural Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"136-167"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46412437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Transcultural Approach Within a Disciplinary Framework: An Introduction","authors":"Daniel G. König, K. Rakow","doi":"10.17885/HEIUP.TS.2016.2.23642","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17885/HEIUP.TS.2016.2.23642","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this themed section is to analyse and evaluate the relationship between the transcultural paradigm and various more or less established academic disciplines or fields of research.","PeriodicalId":42064,"journal":{"name":"Transcultural Studies","volume":"2016 1","pages":"89-100"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44983040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Constructivism’s Vešč, Objet, Gegenstand and the New Art of the “Object”","authors":"S. Vladiv-Glover","doi":"10.1163/23751606-01302003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23751606-01302003","url":null,"abstract":"There is no doubt that the Futurists, Constructivists, Productionists – all the Russian avant-garde groups – wanted to represent the “new world” of socialism in and through art. However, the relationship between art and life, or art and work in the new socialist state was not one-dimensional. This can be seen from a close reading of one of the major Constructivist manifestoes, published in Ilya Erenburg’s and El Lisitzky’s short-lived journal “Vesc, Objet, Gegenstand” 1922–23 (Berlin). What emerges from the militaristic jargon and the metaphors with which the new art platform announced in “Vesc, Objet, Gegenstand” comes to expression is that the Constructivist movement is focused on structures which it calls “the object” and that this emerging Structuralism constitutes not just a method of artistic inquiry but a new mode of perception. This paper attempts to show, by a close reading of the lexicon of this Constructivist manifesto, how the concept of the ‘object’ had a metaphysical dimension in that it was raised into a phenomenology of perception by the Constructivist artist but also a new artistic paradigm of international, collective art.","PeriodicalId":42064,"journal":{"name":"Transcultural Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"145-159"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23751606-01302003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48641873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Concrete ‘Sound Object’ and the Emergence of Acoustical Film and Radiophonic Art in the Modernist Avant-Garde","authors":"Christopher Williams","doi":"10.1163/23751606-01302008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23751606-01302008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42064,"journal":{"name":"Transcultural Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"239-263"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23751606-01302008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41717860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Estranging Objects and Complicating Form: Viktor Shklovsky and the Labour of Perception","authors":"A. Bulatova","doi":"10.1163/23751606-01302004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23751606-01302004","url":null,"abstract":"In Viktor Shklovsky’s essay “Art as Device” habitual perception is described as a dangerous practice, which renders one insensitive to the experiences of modernity. Importantly, the subjects’ automatized relationship with the surrounding world disrupts their ability to engage with objects. Rather than being experienced through the senses, the object is recognized through an epistemological (preconceived) framework. As a result, Shklovsky argues, “we do not see things, we merely recognize them by their primary characteristics. The object passes before us, as if it were prepackaged.” By making the usual strange Shklovsky’s technique of estrangement promises a relief from an alienating, consumerist experience of modernity, which “automatizes the object” instead of enabling perception: “in order to return sensation to our limbs, in order to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony, man has been given the tool of art.” In this article I trace the development of Shklovsky’s views on literature and the arts as an alternative way of experiencing objects in his writings during and after the Russian Revolution. I will pay particular attention to the relationship between things and words in Shklovsky’s writings produced during his exile in Berlin in 1923. The publication of the Berlin-based magazine Veshch/ Objet /Gegenstand in 1922, shortly before Shklovsky’s arrival, signals a rejection of both recognition and observation as passive consumerist practices. Instead, the manifesto published in the first issue of the magazine invites its readers to create new objects, which here is inseparable from the creation of new social formations. I will argue that Shklovsky’s 1923 writings provide a rethinking of the word “object” in society, literature and the arts. The function of art is not to “express what lies beyond words and images,” in other words, not to point to a referent that exists as a ‘real’ object, but rather to create a world “of independently existing things.”","PeriodicalId":42064,"journal":{"name":"Transcultural Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"160-176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23751606-01302004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44211518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The End of The Soviet Baroque: Historical Poetics in Olesha’s Envy and Tynianov’s The Wax Person","authors":"Anastasiya Osipova","doi":"10.1163/23751606-01302005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23751606-01302005","url":null,"abstract":"The term Soviet Baroque was coined by Viktor Shklovsky in 1929 to describe the aesthetic and theoretical tendencies of the left art of the 1920s – a generation of revolutionary artists to which he himself belongs. Shklovsky understands Baroque not as a specific historical style, but as the aesthetics of “intensive detail” and nonsychronous conception of history. With the onset of the Stalinist ideology and of the Five-Year Plan era’s optimism in the legibility of progress, Shklovsky becomes openly critical of the Soviet Baroque and his former artistic allies who espouse it. In this article I analyze the Soviet Baroque as an extension of a broader tendency that falls in line with the tradition of Historical Poetics and draw on several examples from Yuri Olesha’s Envy and Yuri Tynianov’s The Wax Person that I consider illustrative of this tendency.","PeriodicalId":42064,"journal":{"name":"Transcultural Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"177-196"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23751606-01302005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45905798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Matt Kish’s Illustration: A Nuanced Remapping of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness","authors":"Yao Xiaoling","doi":"10.1163/23751606-01302007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23751606-01302007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42064,"journal":{"name":"Transcultural Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"217-238"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23751606-01302007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42773430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}